Uganda fights to eliminate harmful aflatoxins in grains

KAMPALA – Grain industry players in Uganda in partnership with development partners are launching an ambitious campaign in the fight against aflatoxins in food.

Aflatoxins are mold-produced mycotoxins that can wreak havoc on produce that hasn’t been properly dried. Food crops such as grains, legumes, oil crops, and others can be contaminated at high levels, providing a major health danger to humans and cattle.

According to a previous study, eating foods high in aflatoxin increases the risk of liver cancer and other disorders. High aflatoxin restrictions have also been cited as a “significant impediment” to Ugandan agricultural exports to the East African area and beyond. Contamination can also result in crop loss, which adds to hunger.

 Grains grown in Uganda include maize, millet, sorghum, rice, and wheat. 

Ms. Agnes Kirabo, the Executive Director of Food Rights Alliance, whose organisation is taking the lead role spoke to our reporter on the opportunities the new campaign presents to grain actors in Uganda and the region.

Ms. Kirabo says that the campaign dubbed the Joint Advocacy Campaign in Aflatoxin Control in Uganda seeks to raise awareness and provide training to all stakeholders in the food supply chain, from the farm to the end consumer, on how to handle food safely and avoid contamination.

Themed: “Let’s kick aflatoxins out of our food and out of feed” the campaign is expected to be launched early this year.

“With this campaign, that we wish to launch early this year, we are looking forward to raising people’s civic cautiousness of all the actors whose hands touch the food. We wish to engage and get into their sub-cautiousness such that we take responsibility and we take cautious decisions,” Ms. Kirabo said, noting that, “the country needs to ensure that all actors are very cautious about the risks that aflatoxin contamination brings to health but also to the trade”.

“We are looking at raising this civic cautiousness but also the competences of the actors such that they engage in the best practices to reduce and control aflatoxin at least to the minimum levels,” she added.

According to the project design, the campaign is targeting all actors within the value chain including farmers, aggregators, processors, transporters, traders, consumers, and policymakers.

Whereas in many cases, grains get aflatoxin contamination on the farm during production, Kirabo says poor harvesting and storage practices are also part of the problem.

“The farmers may take a very good responsibility and actually keep our food safe from aflatoxins, but the aggregators become negligent. These are the people that collect small quantities of the grains and then aggregate them and they store them. Many of them are not even aware that actually the grains must be of a certain moisture content and they must be kept or stored in a certain recommend recommended standard storage facility and things like that,” she said.

“So we also wish to target them with the right best practices, but also knowing that they have to take conscious actions and keep the grain the foods safe,” Ms. Kirabo added.

Grain sector actors across the country will be targeted with tailor-made messages in their respective ecological zones as part of the multi-million United States Agency for International Development in Uganda which will be implemented by the Food Rights Alliance in collaboration with the Ugandan government and private sector stakeholders.

Unsafe food including germs, viruses, parasites, or chemical substances, according to the World Health Organization, causes more than 200 ailments, ranging from diarrhea to cancer.

Uganda has on several occasions been on the spot for having food contaminated with toxins, which are thought to be contributing to a high number of people getting diagnosed with cancer of the liver.

One such controversy was during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic where free food supplied by the government to the vulnerable people tested positive for aflatoxins.

However, this is not the only blow that the country has faced as recently Ugandan food being exported to the neighboring countries has been blocked due to the same problem. In July 2023, for instance, several trucks carrying maize were blocked at Uganda- South Sudan border at Elegu on the allegation that it contained aflatoxins of over 10bpp, a high measure of the abundance of b-propellerphytases (bpp) and therefore, unsuitable for human consumption.

Kirabo says that if the aflatoxin menace is not addressed, Uganda risks losing its market share within the region.

“What we need to do as a country is to ensure that all actors are very cautious about the risks that aflatoxin contamination brings to health but also to the trade,” she added.